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Description:
| Enjoy an exploration of Tuscany's arts - both culinary and fine. In this twelve-day program you will learn about the history of food and culture in Tuscany, and more specifically, in Florence. This program presents a blend of lectures and excursions, demonstrations and practice. You will visit an inn where balsamic vinegar is aged 25 years, a state-of-the-art olive oil mill, a Chianti vineyard, and a medieval farmhouse where you will prepare a typical Truscan meal.
Explore the existence of the dual treasures of Tuscany and Florence: art and food, or the jewel box and the lunch box. Our course derives from the knowledge that art is never born of itself, but evolves from a ground made fertile by geography and culture. Topography, agricultural development, politics, family structure, economics, trade and migration all play an important role.
Join us to visit the people who shape the culture and carry on the traditions of the Tuscan table. We will meet butchers and bakers, drive out into the exquisite countryside surrounding Florence to see the vineyards and olive groves, and try our hand at making ravioli, risotto and ribollita. Together we will wander through markets, museums and churches, and explore a bit of Tuscany - the Chianti hills to the south and the Mugello valley to the north of Florence - tasting as we go.
Although visits to museums play an important part in any seminar in Florence, these will be balanced by visits to living contemporary sites. We will focus on the less visited jewels - the wonderful small museums in "our" neighborhood north of the Duomo, a morning on the other side of the Arno river to visit Masaccio's masterpiece at the Brancacci chapel, along with other treasures in sculpture and painting. It will be up to you to decide which box of Tuscany you most admire, lunch or jewel.
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